Thursday, December 29, 2016

In the classic short story “The Things They Carried,”
Tim O’Brien writes about the weight of the things foot soldiers carried in
Vietnam.

These necessities and near necessities were as practical
as mosquito repellent, as powerful as anti-personnel mines and as personal as
memories.

Rereading the title story in the terrific book published
more than 25 years ago, I started thinking about the New Year, what I want to
carry into it and what I hope we can leave behind.

In the latter category is the 2016 presidential
election. Yes, it was a shock, but we need to let it go. Unfortunately, talking
heads aren’t alone in prolonging the agony.

President Barack Obama said this week he could have won
the general election had he been able to run again. That’s the kind of wishful
thinking Democrats should leave behind with 2016 – and not because the
statement is untrue.

It’s unknowable, of course, which makes great fodder
for late-night dorm sessions but not productive thought for the rest of us.

Obama is still the “most admired” man in America,
Gallup reports, and nobody worked harder on Hillary Clinton’s behalf than he
and first lady Michelle Obama did, in large part because Obama’s legacy was on
the line.

But the president’s confident assertion that his
message of tolerance, openness, diversity and energy would have mobilized
voters and defeated Donald Trump was a self-serving punch in the gut to Clinton
and her supporters.

Naturally, though, it was Trump, not Clinton, who
reacted.

“NO
WAY!” would Obama have won, Trump tweeted. He returned to Obama’s
remark in later tweets the way a tongue explores a sore tooth.

Obama, in the podcast interview with his old friend
David Axelrod, also said Clinton was too cautious during the campaign because
she thought she was winning, but she “performed wonderfully under really tough
circumstances.” He blamed the news media for a double standard in reporting
negative news about Clinton.

Basically,
he did everything but say she pitched great for a girl.

It’s time to stop beating up on Clinton, stop
second-guessing her campaign decisions and why she never matched her husband on
the stump.

I’d also like to see politicians stop blaming the news
media when things don’t go their way, but that’s not happening.

What-ifs keep us focused on the past when we need to
be clear-eyed about the policies and ethics of the incoming administration. And
there’s plenty for
Democrats to do to prepare for the next congressional election. In 2018, Democrats
have to defend 10 Senate seats in states Trump carried.

Trump
won the White House, if not the popular vote, with promises to roll back the
clock at least to pre-Obama days, maybe earlier. No
wonder he wants the Rockettes at his inauguration. They performed at
George W. Bush’s in 2005 and 2009.

One
thing I’d like to see left behind with 2016 is Trump’s tweets. Complicated
policies can’t be resolved in 140 characters.

Trump has a combined
total of 39 million followers on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, and that,
“allows him to add an element of a conversation that’s never occurred,” Spicer,
a Rhode Island native, told a radio station in his home state.

Will
Obama tweet? We’ll see. He plans to write another book, speak out when he sees
Trump heading in the wrong direction and help develop the next generation of
Democratic leaders.

One notion we can leave
behind is that the Obamas will strew rose petals in Trump’s path to the White
House. No big surprise there since Obama during the campaign called Trump
“unfit to serve” and “woefully unprepared” for the job.

It was unrealistic to
expect Obama, who sees Trump eager to dismantle everything Obama has done, to
be as gracious as George W. and Laura Bush on their way out.

It’s been a tough year, and there aren’t many things I
want to carry into 2017. Here’s one: “When they go low, we go high.”

More slogan than reality in 2016, “when they go low,
we go high” is a worthy goal for the New Year.

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

In the olden days before he let loose on Twitter, Donald J.
Trump called Howard Stern’s radio show and let loose.

In June 1999, Trump confided on air that his daughter Ivanka,
then 17, had made him swear he wouldn’t date anyone younger than she was.

“As she grows older, the field is getting very limited,” the twice-married
billionaire joked.

A few months later, Trump, 53, was dating a beautiful
Slovenian model named

Melania Knauss, 26, less than half his age but old enough
to meet his daughter’s rule, and he reportedly was “exploring” a White House
bid.

Bad boy Stern had Trump and Knauss by phone on his program
and asked her what she was wearing.

“Not much,” she replied. The conversation went downhill from
there. Trump bragged about their sex
life.

Asked soon afterwards about her boyfriend’s comments on their
relationship, Knauss told feature writer Joyce Wadler of The New York Times:
“It’s the man thing, that’s how the man talks.” Sound familiar?

The prescient Wadler wrote:

“Is Mr. Trump a lucky billionaire or what? He’s got a woman
who does not simply stand by her man but over him. (Five feet 10 ½ inches, but
over six feet in her spiky Manolo Blahniks)...she has done Vogue covers in
Europe. She also speaks four languages.

“Who she is, beyond that, is difficult to say, for speaking
with Ms. Knauss is like speaking with a huge, shimmering bubble. She’s light,
she’s fun, she’s exceptionally wonderful to look at; two hours later you walk
away and the conversation disappears into the air. Pop! If anything substantial
was said, it is difficult to recall. She might, in other words, be the perfect
political spouse.”

The frothy story ended with what newspapers called a kicker –
a surprise revelation. In this case, it was a preposterous question: What would
Melania’s role be as first lady if she and her boyfriend ever did end up in the
White House?

Knauss didn’t laugh or blow it off.

“I would be very traditional. Like Betty Ford or Jackie
Kennedy,” she said. “I would support him.”

Trump married his third wife in 2005, and their son Barron
was born in 2006, the same year she became a United States citizen.

Most Americans trace Trump’s political debut to his escalator
ride in June 2015 and fail to consider his long game, that he was turning over
the possibility of the presidency, even as a lark, in 1999.

The Trump family will be White House-bound in less than a
month. Well, he will be. Melania Trump and Barron are staying in New York until
the end of the school year. Her full-time job is as mom, she says.

Daughter Ivanka Trump, now 36, and her husband Jared Kushner, parents
of three, are house-hunting in Washington. She may have an office in the East
Wing and may stand in as first lady on social occasions.

By any measure, the Trump presidency will be unlike others.

But Melania Trump and all first ladies must cope with one
immutable truth: The presidency is hard on families.

“The next family that comes in here -- every person in that
family, every child, every grandchild – their lives will be turned upside down
in a way that no American really understands,” first lady Michelle Obama told
Oprah Winfrey this week on CBS.

President President Barack Obama and Michelle were fierce
warriors for Hillary Clinton, but they have shown extreme grace since the
election, vowing to help the Trumps however they can. Donald Trump, rarely
generous toward Obama, has praised the president and first lady for their
kindness.

So, it was jarring to see Michelle
Obama tell Winfrey: “Now we are feeling what not having hope feels like.”

That comment from an advance clip
was newsworthy because she was speaking for millions of disappointed voters. When
the full program aired later, however, it was clear that the current first lady
has compassion for the next.

Thursday, December 15, 2016

At a holiday craft fair last weekend, a Christmas
ornament made of wood caught my eye.

The hand-painted Canadian goose had a jaunty wreath
around his neck – and a price tag of $14. I turned away.

Then the artist came over.

“He has moonlight on his wings,” she said. I looked more
closely, and sure enough, there was a faint dusting of glitter.

Suddenly, the goose had a story. That changed
everything.

And, yes, he looks great on my Christmas tree.

We’re in a season of stories. In these, the shortest days
of the year, we celebrate the winter solstice, Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa
-- each with its own story of the triumph of light over darkness.

As seasons go, winter tends to get short shrift. No
one ever said winter afternoon were the two most beautiful words in the English
language, as Henry James did about summer afternoon.

While hardy skiers and sledders find joy in a bright, snowy
landscape, for many of us the season brings more dreaded wintry mix than delightful
winter wonderland.

Shakespeare’s play “A Winter’s Tale” is mostly
remembered for its puzzling stage direction: “Exit, pursued by a bear.”

Fortunately, though, this is also a season of music.
Many of us grew up on the musical story of the underdog “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed
Reindeer” by Johnny Marks and Tchaikovsky’s charming “Nutcracker” and find
comfort as adults in Handel’s sublime “Messiah.”

Long before the Weather Channel told stories of
frightful weather, music regaled us with stories of wintry scenes. Perhaps no
other musical work evokes chill winds and ice as perfectly as Antonio Vivaldi’s
“Winter.”

The 17th and 18th century
composer wrote 500 concertos and dozens of operas, sonatas and cantatas in his
63 years on earth. But the masterpiece most people think of first is “The Four
Seasons.” He paired the music with four sonnets he may have written himself.

I happened to be at the National Gallery of Art last
Sunday afternoon when the Tempesta di Mare, the Philadelphia Baroque Orchestra,
performed Vivaldi’s “Winter.” The piece was part of a winter-themed concert in
the West Garden Court, a peaceful indoor space with tall trees and statuary.

Vivaldi’s winter story unfolds in three movements, and
the music to a remarkable degree tracks the story told in the sonnet.

The first movement portrays the sounds of someone
shivering in biting, icy winds with chattering teeth and stamping feet. In the
second we imagine someone sitting contentedly by a blazing fire at home, while
people outside are drenched in pouring rain. In the third we are outside in the
storm again, walking the icy path slowly, fearful of slipping and falling on
the ice, but we crash to the ground anyway. Back inside, we still feel the cold
wind.

“This is winter, which nonetheless brings its own
delights,” the sonnet accompanying “Winter” concludes. In Vivaldi’s hands, it
does.

At a time when many think Washington can’t do anything
right, it’s worth recalling the story of the National Gallery’s free Sunday concerts,
now in their 75th season.

The museum had opened only the year before when the first
concert in May 1942 welcomed wartime troops. The gallery’s director was
inspired by the National Gallery in London, which held piano concerts during the
Blitz of 1940 and 1941.

In Washington, the gallery has sponsored more than 3,000
free concerts. Performers come from all over the world. The concerts are scheduled from fall to spring, and start times vary.
Seating is first-come, first served.

If we ever needed stories to brighten the mood and
renew our faith, it’s now. In our deeply divisive presidential election, both
candidates were selling their personal stories. Their narratives couldn’t have
been more different, and voters, bless their hearts, chose the more
entertaining one.

President-elect Donald Trump is building the story of
his presidency with his Cabinet appointments, delighting some and horrifying
others.

This winter will bring the Trump inauguration,
protests and celebrations. In the meantime, enjoy the stories of the triumph of
light over dark – winter solstice, Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa.

Thursday, December 8, 2016

For nearly seven years, congressional Republicans have
promised to “repeal and replace” Obamacare with something better and more
affordable.

Repeal is easy. Since President Barack Obama got the
Affordable Care Act through Congress in 2010 without a single Republican vote, the
House has voted more than 60 times to repeal all or part of it.

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump called the law “a
total disaster” and vowed to repeal and replace it on Day One.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday repeal
will be the first item of business in the New Year when the Senate returns Jan.
3.

Replace is hard. Republicans have yet to agree on a
path forward for what inevitably will be known as Trumpcare.

Even Trump now wants to keep two popular provisions of
the health law. After he met with Obama in the Oval Office, the president-elect
said he favors allowing children under 26 to stay on their parents’ health
insurance plans and requiring coverage of people with existing medical
conditions.

Trump’s a big-picture guy, so replacement details will
fall to Congress, where, until the election, many were more interested in
politics than policy. I know you’re surprised.

Only on Dec. 2 did House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy
send a letter to governors and state insurance commissioners asking for their
ideas about health care reform.That way, if Trumpcare goes bad, state officials
can share the blame.

McCarthy said the two-step repeal and replace process
could take much of next year and beyond. House Speaker Paul Ryan also lowered
expectations of speedy action.

“Clearly there will be a transition and a bridge so
that no one is left out in the cold, so that no one is worse off,” Ryan said
Monday in an interview with Craig Gilbert of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Ryan would not hazard a guess about how long the
transition might take.

“It will clearly take time. It took them about six
years to stand up Obamacare. It’s not going to be replaced come next football
season,” he said.

One possibility is for Republicans to resurrect the repeal
bill Obama vetoed last January. It called for a two-year delay in the effective
date of replacement. Some Republicans say six months is enough.

Republican leaders invited Democrats to work with
them, even though Republicans refused to cooperate with Obama. Senate
Democratic leader Chuck Schumer derided Republicans as “the dog who caught the
bus,” saying, “They don’t know what to do.”

Repeal without replacement will cause “huge calamity
from one end of America to the other,” Schumer said. “Bring it on.”

In a letter to Trump, the
American Hospital Association and the Federation of American Hospitals urged him
and Congress not repeal Obamacare without a replacement. If that happens,
Congress should restore funding to hospitals that was cut by Obamacare, the
groups said, so hospitals can defray some of their costs.

The nonpartisan but left-leaning Urban Institute warned
in an analysis this week that repeal without a clear replacement could throw into
chaos the private health insurance market. Millions of Americans buy insurance
directly rather than through an employer.

The number of uninsured could rise to 59 million by
2019, the study said. That’s far more than the 41 million who lacked insurance
in 2014 when major provisions of Obamacare went into effect. About 28.5 million
remained uninsured last year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Trump’s pick to lead Health and Human Services, House
Budget Chairman Tom Price, wants to replace Obamacare with modest tax credits pegged
to age, not income, to help people buy insurance on the private market.

Price’s proposed Empower Patients First Act also calls
for grants to help states create “high-risk” insurance pools and expands health
savings accounts.

Republicans have not rushed to embrace the plan. Critics
say it’s woefully underfunded and millions of Americans would lose coverage.

Taking time is not necessarily bad. Rushing could be
worse.

But if members of Congress are going to blow up
Obama’s signature legislation, they should be held to their promises and do no
harm to the more than 20 million people who have insurance because of Obamacare.

To do anything less is to risk disappointing and
disillusioning more Americans at a time when trust in government and politicians
is badly frayed.

Monday, December 5, 2016

Locked Up for the Holidays

December 05, 2016

By Marsha Mercer

A juvenile resident sits in a classroom at a detention center in Atlanta. In many places, juvenile justice officials or nonprofits provide small gifts or holiday meals to young offenders who spend the holidays in custody.

The “most wonderful time of the year” may be the hardest for tens of thousands of young people locked up for the holidays.

But many states try — within the confines of security rules, budgets and protocols — to make the season a little brighter for youthful offenders, who often are housed far from home.

As it has every year since 1937, the Oklahoma Santa Claus Commission will spread cheer with presents. Each of the 400 offenders in the state’s residential detention facilities and group homes will receive a Kelly green duffle bag, a holiday stocking with candy and stationery, body wash (Dove for girls and Axe for boys), and a $9 gift card.

Staff will also distribute holiday cards, and the facilities will throw holiday parties.

“These are children who made a mistake,” said Tierney Tinnin, chair of the commission and deputy communications director of the state Office of Juvenile Affairs. “They’re working through the program to understand why they made a mistake. For us to provide a sense of normalcy in the holiday season helps put them on the path to right decisions, so they will be a great asset to the community when they come out.”

Many youthful offenders have a parent in prison, while others were raised by grandparents who physically aren’t able to make the trip or can’t afford to, Tinnin said.

The gift-giving in Oklahoma and other states fits with a broader trend in juvenile justice: replacing the adult-style prison model with a more positive culture in state facilities.

“The more we try to normalize these kids, the better the outcome,” said James Bueche, deputy secretary of the Louisiana Office of Juvenile Justice, which will distribute holiday gift bags to about 235 incarcerated youths, ages 13 to 20. “If you treat them as less than human, that’s the way they’re going to be.”

Shackles and Handcuffs

Around the country, state, local and private detention and residential centers, as well as faith and local support groups, provide small gifts or holiday meals to juveniles who spend the holidays in custody. What makes Oklahoma’s gift program different is that it’s required by law and funded by the state.

The state budget dedicates $10,000 a year to the Santa commission, which also collects private donations. The commission had about $75,000 in its account going into the holiday season.

“I have never been able to find anybody who does it like we do,” said Paula Christiansen, a nine-year veteran public information officer at the Oklahoma juvenile affairs agency.

In Maryland, youths can earn a pass for good behavior to go home to celebrate Christmas. Last year, when the family of a girl who’d earned a pass could not come pick her up, a Department of Juvenile Services staff member drove her home.

But first, two staff members, one wearing a Santa hat, put the girl into shackles and handcuffs that were fastened to a belly chain with a black box, and attached a GPS monitor to her ankle, according to the state Juvenile Justice Monitoring Unit 2015 annual report, which includes photos of the preparations.

Some residential facilities put up holiday trees and let the juveniles make decorations and toys to use as gifts. Others have religious services and serve holiday meals.

“I think the facilities around the country do a really good job of trying to create a supportive atmosphere,” said Wayne Bear, CEO of the National Partnership for Juvenile Services. “But it’s not home.”

“As you can imagine, these are kids who typically have not experienced the family traditions other kids have on holidays and birthdays,” said Bear, who is also executive director of the Juvenile Detention Centers and Alternative Programs in Pennsylvania.

Funding for Presents

No general or taxpayer funds are used in Louisiana’s program. The money to pay for the gift bags — with pajamas, body wash, candy and chips — comes from fees collected from movies that were made in state facilities and youth canteens in the detention centers, he said.

The gifts are “not anything extravagant,” Bueche said, adding that the state correctional system does not usually issue pajamas, and the kids like special soap.

“They get excited about getting the gift bags,” he said.

In Oklahoma, the price tag for each gift will be about $30, and with related holiday expenses the fund will pay out about $15,000 in all, Tinnin of the Santa commission said. The duffle bags cost $12 apiece, she said.

The state polled the managers of the facilities to find out what the teens wanted. When released from custody, the young people usually leave for home straight from court, and they carry their possessions in a trash bag, she said. The duffle bags are a way for the state to give kids a positive send-off for the next phase of their life.

Oklahoma’s Santa Claus Commission goes back to 1935, when a state budget officer named R.R. Owen and his wife visited an orphanage in Helena and learned that the orphans would not receive any Christmas presents.

The next year, Owen collected donations for gifts, and in 1937 the Legislature created the commission, which is required by law to provide Christmas presents to every child in state custody. The 1937 law authorized $2,000 a year in state funds to buy gifts.

The original goal of the commission was laudable, he argued, but the program was outdated. “We are talking about … people who committed criminal acts,” Christian said. But the Legislature wouldn’t kill the Santa commission.

Playing the Long Game

Advocacy groups that once made holidays brighter with holiday gift bags for incarcerated youth now devote most of their time and energy to lobbying to reform the juvenile justice system.

“Groups are fighting for the closure of institutions, to make states realize prisons for kids are not effective,” said Tamar Birckhead, a juvenile justice law professor at the University of North Carolina and visiting professor at Yale University.

Instead of focusing only on the long game of prison reform, she said, nonprofit juvenile justice groups could devote some of their budget to “doing something for the truly unfortunate youth who are locked up.”

Ideally states would release the youths, she said.

But failing that, she said, states should ensure that families have transportation to visit their incarcerated children, and schedule a holiday party for youth and their families at institutions.

For the teens, a party with family “would feel ‘normal’ to them and not reinforce that they have in essence been exiled from the community,” she wrote in an email.

Penelope Spain, CEO of Open City Advocates, formerly called Mentoring Today, said her group collected items from the public for holiday gift bags for three years in Washington, D.C., but stopped about six years ago.

“It’s silly how many snags can go wrong,” Spain said. “People are trying to do good things but they don’t realize how secure the facilities are.”

For example, hardcover books are banned from many juvenile and adult corrections facilities because they are heavy and can be used as weapons. Bubble gum is often prohibited because it can be used to block locking systems in doors.

“We love it when people care about our kids,” said Brenda Padavil, public affairs specialist with the District of Columbia Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, which operates the 60-bed New Beginnings Youth Development Center in Laurel, Maryland.

“We allow gift bags,” she said, but staff goes through each bag to make sure the contents meet security standards. The long list of unacceptable items includes perfume and cologne, hats, watches and hoop earrings larger than a quarter.

At New Beginnings last year, a Christmas meal was catered by a local restaurant. This Thanksgiving, incarcerated teens had an in-house dinner with their families.

“It’s important for people to remember these kids are also citizens,” Padavil said. “They’re members of the community.”

Thursday, December 1, 2016

My guess is that few demonstrators who burned American
flags to protest the election of Donald J. Trump have attended a funeral at
Arlington National Cemetery.

Had they watched honor guards in white gloves neatly
fold and present to the next of kin the flag that covered the coffin of a
fallen service member, they would see the flag as personal.

A powerful and poignant symbol of sacrifice and honor,
the American flag should never be torched to make a political point. The very
idea is repugnant.

This is not to say, though, that someone who burns the
flag in protest should be jailed for a year or stripped of citizenship, as
Trump suggested.

“Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag –
if they do, there must be consequences – perhaps loss of citizenship or year in
jail,” the president-elect tweeted at 6:55 on Tuesday morning.

The tweet seemed to come out of the blue, but Fox News
reportedly had just aired a segment about a dispute at private Hampshire
College in Massachusetts, where a flag was burned in an anti-Trump protest.

“Flag burning should be illegal – end of story,” Jason
Miller, Trump transition spokesman, insisted later that day on CNN. “The
president-elect is a very strong supporter of the First Amendment, but there’s
a big difference between that and burning the American flag.”

No, actually, there’s not.

The Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. Johnson in 1989
that flag burning was “symbolic speech” protected by the First Amendment and
invalidated laws against flag burning in 48 states.

“If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First
Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea
simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable,” the
court ruled in a 5-to-4 decision.

Among those in the majority was Justice Antonin Scalia.

“If I were king, I would not allow people to go about
burning the American flag,” Scalia later told a TV interviewer. “However, we
have a First Amendment, which says that in particular to speech . . . burning
the flag is a form of expression.”

That likely would surprise Trump, who has joined the ranks
of politicians who periodically fulminate against flag burning. By doing so,
they draw attention to an exceedingly rare act that ought to be tolerated -- and
ignored.

Perhaps no First Amendment issue is thornier. The American
Legion applauded Trump’s tweet and urged Congress to prohibit flag desecration,
something Congress has tried to do repeatedly over the years.

Everybody should take a deep breath and remember the
wisdom of the late Sen. Daniel Inouye, Democrat of Hawaii, who received the
Medal of Honor for his service in World War II, even as fellow Americans of
Japanese descent were incarcerated in U.S. prison camps.

“This objectionable expression is obscene, it is
painful, it is unpatriotic,” Inouye once said. “But I believe Americans gave
their lives in many wars to make certain all Americans have a right to express
themselves, even those who harbor hateful thoughts.”

Then-Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York co-sponsored a
bill in 2005 that would have punished flag burning by a fine up to $100,000 or
a year in prison, or both. Her idea was to find common ground between veterans
groups and free speech advocates.

“Senator Clinton, in Pander Mode,” The New York Times
opined in an editorial 11 years ago this week, saying flag burnings had largely
disappeared since the Vietnam War.

“Flag-burning hasn’t been in fashion since college
students used slide rules in math class and went to pay phones at the student
union to call their friends. Even then, it was a rarity that certainly never
put the nation’s security in peril,” the editors trenchantly observed.

It’s still true that
flag burning is rare and has never imperiled national security. Criminalizing flag burning might be politically popular, but
the last thing we need is to make martyrs of publicity seekers with lighters who
want their 15 minutes of fame.

Trump soon will fill the court vacancy caused by
Scalia’s death. He has promised to name a justice who thinks like Scalia, and
he should -- on flag burning and the First Amendment.

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

It’s the holiday season, so here’s a suggestion for
your shopping list: Give a newspaper subscription. Better, give two – one local
and one national.

To me, getting the newspapers – yes, two -- off the
sidewalk in the morning and sitting with them and a cup of coffee is one of the
joys of life. People who read newspapers prefer to read them in print, studies
show, but fewer people are experiencing that joy.

It’s an irony of our time that newspaper circulation
continues to decline when we need to know more than ever what our elected
officials are doing. Our democracy needs voters who can distinguish between
truth and lies.

We need real news, reliable information from sources
we can trust. Real news is the antidote to toxic fake news, click-bait stories
that deliberately mislead readers for fun and profit.

Average weekday newspaper circulation fell 7 percent
last year, the most since 2010. Sunday paper circulation also declined. Both
were because of fewer print sales. Digital circulation rose 2 percent, according
to the Pew State of the News Media report in June.

For newspapers to survive and do their watchdog work,
they need advertising revenue, which also is in decline.

I recommend giving the print product because we all
spend too many hours in front of screens. If your friends and family prefer
getting their news digitally, by all means give them a digital subscription. Three-fourths
of newspapers now require a subscription to read online.

Bashing the news media is always in fashion for
politicians. President-elect Donald Trump has said about the news media: “They
are so dishonest…70 to 75 percent are totally dishonest. Absolute scum.
Remember that. Scum. Scum. Totally dishonest people.”

He has said he wants to
open up the libel laws so he can sue newspapers, although he had second
thoughts when someone told him he might get sued more as a result.

Trump, who rarely mentions The New York Times without
the word “failing,” is thin-skinned. He doesn’t like news stories that are critical
of him and his policies.

With 13 million followers on Twitter and 12 million on
Facebook, he prefers to bypass the media. On Monday, he put out his plans for
his first 100 days as president in a YouTube video.

But who broke the story of Hillary Clinton’s use of a
private email server? The Times in March 2015 ran a page one story that led to
the FBI investigation.

And it’s not just the big, national newspapers that do
excellent work. Reporters for the Tampa Bay Times and Sarasota Herald-Tribune devoted
18 months to a project that uncovered a pattern of violence, neglect and 15
deaths in state mental hospitals in Florida.

The Portland Press Herald in Maine ran a six-part
series documenting severe ecological changes in the warming ocean from Nova
Scotia to Cape Cod.

Newspapers and the news media are not perfect, of
course. The botched prognostications of the presidential election results hurt credibility.
Reduced budgets have led to staff cuts and curtailed coverage.

Trump is the latest in a line of presidents and
presidential contenders who have used the news media for target practice. Lyndon
Johnson scolded the media that criticized his Vietnam policy. Richard Nixon had
journalists on his enemies list.

During the 1992 campaign, President George H.W. Bush
loved the bumper strip that read: “Annoy the media. Re-elect Bush.”

Bush, though, distinguished between the reporters
covering him and the talking heads he thought unfair. Trump has shown universal
disdain, although he cares deeply what’s said about him.

Trump reportedly rises at 5 a.m., reads several
newspapers, including The New York Times, and watches the morning TV shows –
and then he tweets.

For all his bluster, even Trump recognizes the value
of newspapers.

At his meeting with the Times’s reporters and editors Tuesday,
he called it “a great, great American jewel, a world jewel.” And he said. “I hope
we can get along.”

Right. We’ll see how that works out.

But reading a daily newspaper -- or two -- will give
you the best chance of knowing what really happens around the corner and in the
nation’s capital.

Thursday, November 17, 2016

A friend tells me she’s still very sad. The election was a “slap
in the face of decency,” and she can’t forgive her sisters and their husbands for
voting for Donald Trump.

Another friend has trouble sleeping. A third said she’s
stuck in election denial.

“It cannot be as bad as we can imagine,” she wrote in an
email, adding, “Yes it is.”

Nearly 62 million Hillary Clinton voters are as gloomy as
the nearly 61 million Trump voters are jubilant.

Into this maelstrom of emotions comes the holiday devoted to
carbs, calories – and gratitude. What -- now?

Yes, bring on Thanksgiving. We have rarely needed it more.

We can’t always agree about politics, and shouldn’t. But we
can use the pause in our daily routines to gather together, give thanks for
what we have and share love with family and friends.

We’ve been giving thanks since before we had a president or
a country. Massachusetts and Virginia still squabble over where the first
Thanksgiving occurred. The Pilgrims’ celebration of the harvest and survival
with about 90 Wampanoag Indians was in 1621, two years after Virginia colonists
marked their safe arrival with a day of prayerful thanksgiving.

In 1789, George Washington signed a proclamation declaring a
day of “public thanksgiving and prayer” for the new government. Other
presidents followed, with a few interruptions. Thomas Jefferson refused to
issue a Thanksgiving proclamation because he saw it as a conflict of church and
state.

It took a decades-long crusade by Sarah Josepha Hale, editor
of Godey’s Lady’s Book, to bring the national holiday into being. She wrote her
first editorial on the subject in 1837.

Thanksgiving “might, without inconvenience, be observed on
the same day of November, say the last Thursday in the month, throughout all
New England; and also in our sister states, who have grafted it upon their
social system. It would then have a national character, which would,
eventually, induce all the states to join in the commemoration of `Ingathering,’”
she wrote.

With foresight, she added: “It is a festival which will
never become obsolete, for it cherishes the best affections of the heart – the
social and domestic ties.”

After many more editorials and through Hale’s persistent appeals,
more than 30 states and territories had Thanksgiving on their calendars by the
1850s.

Because Hale never gave up, our national Thanksgiving
holiday was created at a time even more divisive than ours. She finally
persuaded President Abraham Lincoln to issue a proclamation in October 1863, as
the Civil War raged.

Lincoln put out a call to “fellow-citizens in every part of
the United States, and also those who are at sea, and those who are sojourning
in foreign lands to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as
a Day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the
Heavens.”

Secretary of State William H. Seward,
not Lincoln, actually wrote the proclamation, although Lincoln signed it.
Seward’s original manuscript was sold a year later to raise money for Union
troops, according to Abraham Lincoln Online.

The holiday was celebrated on the last Thursday of November
by tradition – until President Franklin D. Roosevelt thought he’d boost retail
sales by moving Thanksgiving up a week in 1939, from Nov. 30 to Nov. 23. An
uproar ensued, and some states celebrated two Thanksgivings. Two years later
Congress set Thanksgiving in law as the fourth Thursday.

Today we know that practicing gratitude – and not just on
Thanksgiving -- is good for us. Hundreds of academic studies have found physical,
psychological and social benefits in gratitude – from lower blood pressure to
less loneliness to more optimism.

Gratitude is “an affirmation of goodness. We affirm that
there are good things in the world, gifts and benefits we’ve received,” Robert
A. Emmons, a psychology professor at the University of California, Davis, wrote
in an essay for Greater Good, a University of California, Berkeley, website.

Emmons, a leading authority in the study of gratitude, said by
practicing gratitude, “we recognize that the sources of this goodness are
outside of ourselves.”

And yet, one of the many ironies of the 2016 election is
that Clinton’s marital status and gender may define her place in history – as
former first lady and first woman presidential nominee of a major political
party.

She won the popular vote, but because she did not win
the White House, she will always be seen as the wife of a president. Because of
the Electoral College, she will never have the chance to prove herself as
president.

For all her subsequent accomplishments, marrying Bill
Clinton was Hillary’s best career move, her ticket to the national stage.

As his wife, she became first lady of Arkansas and the
first lady of the United States.

She, an ambitious Yale law graduate surely would have succeeded
in life on her own, but we’ll never know if she would have become a U.S.
senator, secretary of state and a presidential contender – twice – had she not first
risen to prominence in the role of Mrs. In this way, the Hillary Clinton story
is more 20th century than 21st.

The Clintons’ marriage,
like most relationships, is unfathomable to those on the outside. When her husband was accused of womanizing during his bid for
the 1992 Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton proved her loyalty
by dutifully standing by her man -- even as she denied she was doing so.

She later showed her strength by enduring the public humiliation
of his philandering in the White House.

So it seems a particularly cruel twist of fate that,
after she built her own president-ready resume with Senate and State Department
posts, her husband may be to blame for Donald Trump’s decision to enter the 2016
presidential race.

Strange as it now seems, both Clintons formerly were friends
with Trump, who donated to the Clinton Foundation and played golf with Bill.

Bill Clinton called his pal Trump in May 2015 and
encouraged him to play a larger role in Republican politics, The Washington
Post reported.

What exactly was said in the private phone
conversation isn’t known. A few weeks later, Trump glided down the escalator at
Trump Tower and began knocking off GOP presidential contenders, one by one.

And so, Hillary Clinton who in 2008 lost to a Democratic
outsider promising change, lost Tuesday to a Republican outsider promising
change.

As the 2016 campaign tightened at the end, Clinton relied
more and more on President Obama and his popular wife, Michelle, to make the
case for her. Days before the election, the president conversationally asked
men about their resistance to a woman president.

“I just want to say to the guys out there . . . there’s
a reason why we haven’t had a woman president before . . . I want every man out
there who’s voting to kind of look inside yourself and ask yourself, if you’re
having problems with this stuff, how much of it is that we’re just not used to
it?” Obama said at a Clinton rally in Columbus, Ohio.

“So that, like, when a
guy is ambitious and out in the public arena and working hard, well, that’s OK.
But when a woman suddenly does it, suddenly you’re all like, well, why is she
doing that?” he said.

But Trump also won the votes of white women 53 percent
to Clinton’s 43 percent.

When Tim Kaine, Clinton’s running mate, introduced her
at her concession speech Wednesday, he said: “She has made history. In a nation
that is good at so many things, but that has made it uniquely difficult for
women to be elected to federal office, she became the first major party nominee
as a woman to be president and last night won the popular vote of Americans for
the president.”

Minutes later, Clinton, with her husband standing
behind her, said:

“I know we have still not shattered that highest and
hardest glass ceiling, but some day someone will, and hopefully sooner than we
might think right now.”